The White Front Café is closed. So are the bed and breakfast rentals in the floor above the restaurant on North Madison Avenue.
After a six-year run, owners Irv and Ingrid French decided to pack it in. They shut down the restaurant at the close of business on Monday.
"A restaurant thrives on traffic and there is no traffic any more downtown," Irv French said. "It continues to decline. It's no wonder these days you can count more empty storefronts than full ones in downtown North Vernon."
The restaurant used to be open into the evening, but in the last year or so hours were scaled back with a closing at 2 p.m.
"Unless there is a play or something going on at the Park Theatre, there is nobody downtown in the evenings," French said. "That's why we started closing earlier in the afternoon."
Now the White Front is closed permanently, although French said he has been in contact with one person interested in leasing or buying the eatery. He also mentioned, which was noted in an advertisement printed in this week's issue of The Sun, that "should overall conditions improve in the future, we may consider reopening the café and B&B."
French minced no words in blaming the decline in business on the Stellar Communities projects downtown, specifically the closing of Short Street, which ran parallel to Madison Avenue across from the White Front. Short Street is now gone, replaced by the Stellar Plaza that is limited to pedestrian traffic only.
"The Short Street closing absolutely hurt our business," he said. "People don't want to hassle with driving around and trying to find a parking place. It's just inconvenient for them."
Three people dining at one of the tables outside in front of the White Front last Friday were sad to hear the news.
"We come here to eat a couple times a year because we like the place and the food they serve here," said Ed Limpus of Shelbyville.
"It's nice to sit outside to eat, too," added his wife, Cindy.
Running the restaurant was a labor of love for the Frenches.
"We used local themes," Irv French said, noting the Pat O'Connor Room and Ed Whitcomb Room that are part of the banquet facility connected to the main restaurant. Those rooms are in a building that formerly was a jewelry store.
"I bought that building when the jewelry store closed because I didn't want to have a tattoo parlor next door to the restaurant," French said.
The original restaurant building was home to the first White Front Café in the 1960s, 70s and 80s that was known by some as a greasy spoon but was popular with local diners for the breakfast and lunch meals.
"I remember when I was an employee at Kmart in North Vernon and would come here for lunch. You'd have to stand in line to get into the place," Cindy Limpus recalled.
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